I suspect that that's not a typical student's approach. That level of fascination
with the numbers involved sets off my "on the Asperger's spectrum" radar. I'd want
another sample before I judged the school.
Susan Jones
Academic Development Specialist
Center for Academic Success
Parkland College
Champaign, IL 61821
217-353-2056
sujones@parkland.edu
Webmastress,
http://www.resourceroom.net
http://bicyclecu.blogspot.com
>>> Betsy Ruffin <Betsy.Ruffin@CLEBURNE.K12.TX.US> 2/25/2009 11:16 AM >>>
I wish I could say that's not it, but in schools heavily into AR I suspect it is.
I've had campuses I've had to struggle with to keep good non-AR books in the
library (I am one of two overseeing seven elementary libraries) because "they won't
read them if they are not AR". I've also seen students who wanted to read
something else but campus policy wouldn't allow it until all AR points for the
benchmark period were accumulated.
Perhaps the question for librarians is: Given the AR reality, how do we as
librarians pick up the slack, let kids know that reading involved more than AR (and
state testing requirements) and can actually be fun!
>>> Ken Umbach <Ken@UMBACHCONSULTING.COM> 2/25/2009 10:06 AM >>>
I spent an hour or so yesterday at a Borders book store wandering among
the shelves and chatting about books with the eight-year-old son of a
friend. He talked endlessly about reading levels, mentioning AR
frequently, and citing 3.3s and 2.6s and the like, and invariably
referring to the number of pages in books he was reading, or had read
recently, or that classmates were reading, or in the books he picked up
from the shelves in many sections of the store.
In all of that, he said not one word about content. Nothing about
characters, plot, ideas. Nothing. Just reading level. Nothing to suggest
why books are worth reading.
Is that typical of schools' approach to reading these days? Is that the
message being conveyed? Or is that young man's view unusual?
Feel free to reply off-list, to ken@umbachconsulting.com, rather than to
the list.
(FWIW, for those who wonder why I am here . . . for years I worked for the
California State Library, and in that capacity I wrote some widely
circulated policy reports that had a connection to school libraries, as
some members of LM_NET might recall. Also, for a few years I had an
occasional column in Knowledge Quest, about policy and data resources on
the Web. I am also the author of the notorious parody about California's
mythical Velcro crop, still widely used by teachers and librarians as a
kid-friendly example of a deceptive Web page.)
Regards,
Ken Umbach
-------------------------------------------------
Kenneth W. Umbach, Ph.D.
Umbach Consulting & Publishing
ken@umbachconsulting.com
6966 Sunrise Blvd., #263, Citrus Heights, CA 95610 (mailing address)
916-733-2159 (this is voice mail, NOT a fax number)
www.umbachconsulting.com : Business home page
http://theaccidentalpublisher.typepad.com : "The Accidental Publisher"
blog
http://stores.lulu.com/kenumbach : My Lulu.com storefront
www.senior-spectrum.com/umbach/ : "Ken's Corner" column
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